There Is One Secret About The NFL Anthem Protests That No One Wants You To Know

Protesters and league executives are hiding an explosive secret from the American people.

And the truth about the protests is so explosive it could destroy the league for good.

Fans, corporate sponsors, and several owners are furious with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for how he’s handled the anti-American protests.

It’s been portrayed as just another example of his incompetent leadership that includes deflategate, handling players charged with domestic violence, and the concussion scandal.

But one expert believes Goodell’s embrace of the America-hating players is part of a deeper plot to push the league to become a platform for left-wing politics.

Fox Sports 1’s Jason Whitlock wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Goodell’s decision to hire former Clinton spokesmen Joe Lockhart was an early sign that the commissioner was trying to convert the league into an engine of liberal politics.

Whitlock writes:

It makes sense to blame ineffective leadership. But what if the problem is effective leadership? Football is headed exactly where Mr. Goodell has steered it—to the left. The NFL has long been a combatant in America’s larger culture war. But Mr. Goodell—whose father, Charles, was a liberal antiwar Republican senator in the late 1960s—was always an odd choice to run it.

Remember that the NFL was cultivated into prominence by Pete Rozelle, a pro-war conservative. In the 1960s, Rozelle hired a World War II veteran-turned-filmmaker, Ed Sabol, to produce highlights, commercials and documentaries that marketed the sport as patriotic and militaristic. Sabol’s NFL Films made football feel more American than baseball. His work was so critical to the league’s wild growth that in 2011 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The same honor had been bestowed on Rozelle in 1985, while he was still commissioner.

By contrast, a year ago Mr. Goodell hired a Democratic political strategist, Joe Lockhart, as the NFL’s executive vice president of communications. Mr. Lockhart, best known as President Clinton’s press secretary for two years, also worked for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. Last week the New York Times credited him with crafting the NFL’s message on the anthem controversy.

Mr. Lockhart is an aggressive media manipulator. The Times reported that several NFL owners were bothered by a snide comment Mr. Lockhart made about Mr. Trump: “Lockhart told reporters that talking about police brutality is ‘what real locker room talk is.’ ”

But Messrs. Goodell and Lockhart have made bigger gaffes. In mid-October, Mr. Goodell and Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin wrote a letter to the Senate “to offer the National Football League’s full support for the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017.” Mr. Goodell is paid $44 million a year to represent the views of the NFL’s owners, not players or himself.

An ESPN story in late October about the anthem protests portrayed Mr. Goodell as supporting players’ desire to use the NFL as a platform to address whatever social issues they deem important. Buried deep in the article was an anecdote about the owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, complaining to fellow owners, Mr. Goodell and a handful of NFL executives that “we can’t have the inmates running the prison.” Texans players took offense and staged an anthem protest before their Oct. 29 game against the Seahawks.”

There is evidence that fans have picked up on Goodell’s efforts to transform the league into another apparatus of the Democrat Party.

A recent Fox News poll found the NFL experienced a 37 percent decline in favorability among Republicans.

Do you believe Roger Goodell is intentionally trying to turn the NFL into a left-wing social justice institution?